WHAT I WANT DOESN'T WANT ME BACK (ICE BLUE VINYL) | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Cusp, Every album is a product of the environment it was created in and nowhere is that more pertinent than on Cusp's What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back, their second album and the follow-up to 2023's excellent debut You Can Do It All. That first album was one written in transition while the band relocated from Rochester, NY to Chicago. What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back comes much more from a place of stability, of roots beginning to form. "With that feeling of being settled comes the space to ask myself new questions about myself and choices I've made," Jen Bender says, reflecting on that experience. The result of these subtle changes to their form comes to fruition on their thrilling new LP. Formed of 10 new songs, and recorded almost entirely live off the floor at Electrical Audio, What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back feels like both a maturation and a reinvention, every aspect of their sound tweaked and pushed to find new boundaries, to fill new spaces. A number of the songs here peel back the layers on what it means to write songs, the actual process of music making and being in a band; how and why we seek validation, the shapeshifting nature of legitimacy. "These questions have come up a bit in some of our previous work, but I confronted them a bit more directly on this record," Jen expands. "The ultimate consensus is: yes, this is worthwhile and yes, it means something."